Drawing on the work of leading scholars as well as policy makers and analysts, this volume offers the most comprehensive and accessible exploration to date of the major puzzles, issues, and questions surrounding the complex and increasingly visible role of religion in world affairs.

Contributors ; Editors' Introduction: Religion and World Affairs: Blurring the Boundaries - Timothy Samuel Shah, Alfred Stepan, and Monica Duffy Toft ; Part 1: Religion, Secularism, and Secularization ; 1. Why Religion? Why Now? - J. Bryan Hehir ; 2. Rethinking Public Religions - Jose Casanova ; 3. The Politics of Secularism - Elizabeth Shakman Hurd ; Part 2: Religion, Democracy, and Human Rights ; 4. Religion, Democracy, and the <"Twin Tolerations>": Reconciling Political Freedom and Religious Autonomy - Alfred Stepan ; 5. How Should States Deal with Deep Religious Diversity: Can Anything Be Learnt from the Indian Model of Secularism? - Rajeev Bhargava ; 6. Rethinking Islam and Democracy - Robert W. Hefner ; 7. Religious Freedom, Democracy, and International Human Rights - John Witte, Jr. and M. Christian Green ; Part 3: Religion, Conflict, and Peacemaking ; 8. Religion, Terrorism, and Civil Wars - Monica Duffy Toft ; 9. What Religion Contributes to the Politics of Transitional Justice - Daniel Philpott ; Part 4: Religion, Humanitarianism, and Civil Society ; 10. Where Is the Religion? Humanitarianism, Faith, and World Affairs - Michael Barnett ; 11. Faith, Gender, and International Relations - Katherine Marshall ; 12. Religion and Development - Katherine Marshall ; 13. Interreligious Dialogue and International Relations - Thomas Banchoff ; Part 5: Religion and the Media ; 14. Islam and the Promenades of Global Media - Mehrzad Boroujerdi and Nichole J. Allem ; 15. Old Monks, New Media, and the Limits of Soulcraft: A Case Study of Burma's 2007 Saffron Revolution - Diane Winston ; Part 6: Religion and American Foreign Policy ; 16. God's Country? American Evangelicals and US Foreign Policy - Walter Russell Mead ; 17. America's International Religious Freedom Policy - Thomas F. Farr ; 18. Navigating in the Fog: Improving US Government Engagement with Religion - Frederick D. Barton, Shannon Hayden, and Karin von Hippel ; Appendix: Internet Resource Guide - M. Christian Green with Nicole Greenfield ; Index

"There is an increasing recognition across the social sciences that the dominance of an epiphenomenal approach to the study of religion in world affairs has produced inadequate research and scholarship. This volume speaks creatively to that lack, exploring the key themes that arise when discussing religion in international affairs, focusing its six sections thematically on secularization, human rights, conflict and peace-making, civil society, media, and foreign policy." --Theology "Rethinking Religion and World Affairs is a unique compendium of the perspectives of many of the top scholars writing on the increasingly prominent, but long neglected topic of religion and world politics. Illuminating the intersection of religion with the themes of democracy, human rights, conflict, humanitarianism, the media, and foreign policy, these first-rate essays offer broadly accessible, up-to-date treatments of the big ideas that define this field." --Jack Snyder, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations, Columbia University

Timothy Samuel Shah is Associate Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Alfred Stepan is the Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University. He has also been Gladstone Professor of Government at Oxford University and Director of Graduate Studies in Political Science at Yale University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the British Academy. Monica Duffy Toft is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.